The Best Apps for Managing Your Social Media Accounts

Social media is such a valuable tool for marketing yourself or your business, connecting with new people and opportunities, and staying in touch with your network. I have a successful blog, and social media plays a crucial role in branding, promotion and outreach. To ensure my social platforms are in tip-top shape I use a variety of planning and editing apps and websites to oversee my accounts. These social media tools help me to plan, execute, and improve the content that I share across my social feeds. This not only helps me maintain consistency but also enhances the quality of my content.

A large part of what I do as a blogger involves social media, especially Instagram, and I am constantly flipping from app to app in an attempt to keep up with my followers and stay relevant. I have also worked in various jobs overseeing social media for brands, including the beauty brand Laura Mercier and fashion brand Julie Brown Designs. At each job I was exposed to a variety of social media tools that are essential in executing a successful social media strategy. By keeping yourself organized and using these tools, you can grow your following organically and become a social media maven.

UNUM

An important part of overseeing a brand on social media (even if that brand is yourself) is to be as consistent as possible. One of the ways to achieve this is with social media tools that help you plan the content you are going to post, like the appUNUM for Instagram. I’ve used other planning apps in the past but I like this one in particular because I find it simple to use and it has just what I need to make my feed look nice.

Editing Apps:

A Color Story, VSCO, Facetune, Typorama, Background Music

In order to keep my Instagram feed and my content consistent, I like to follow a very similar workflow each time I edit using a few social media tools. The main app I use is A Color Storybecause it fits my bright and colorful aesthetic and I love the filter and effects options offered. However, many people use VSCO for all of their edits. Whichever you prefer it is best to stick with a few favorite filters because, as I previously mentioned, consistency is key in social media.

Sometimes I use Facetune for to remove specks or blemishes on my face (I usually would edit in Lightroom or Photoshop to do this, but when I don’t have time I’ll use Facetune). I mainly use Facetune for the Whiten feature to clean up flatlay type photos. I prefer my backgrounds to be as bright, clean, and crisply white as possible so I use the feature to remove weird shadows and color casts of light. When I want to add stylized text to my Instagram stories I use Typoramato make them a bit prettier. Finally, I use the Background Music app for exactly what you might have guessed–to add background music to videos that I post to my stories and sometimes to my feed.

Hootsuite

This site allows you to connect, monitor, and schedule posts for 35 different social networks. Hootsuite is one of the most useful social media tools for overseeing all of your accounts in one place. Similar sites like Buffer and Sprout Social do essentially the same thing but you will generally only use one. These tools really help save time by showing you the way users are engaging with your content across platforms and allowing you to integrate consistent content on each.

Iconosquare

Iconosquare is an analytics site for Instagram that provides insights into your following, shows you trends of follower growth, helps you keep track of comments, and more. It’s nice because it is specifically designed around Instagram so as far as social media tools go it allows you in depth analysis and monitoring of this specific platform.

Bitly

Bitly is a great tool to use for those social media sites that limit your word count because it shortens links into smaller bits. You can even customize your smaller links and track the link’s analytics. This allows you to look at stats of how many people have clicked it and are engaging with that content.

Followers+

I use Followers+ to see the way my followers are engaging with my content and for two important functions. One is the ability to see who has unfollowed me and the other is to see who my ghost followers are (AKA fake accounts and bots) so that I can block them. It is useful to weed out ghost followers because it is better to have less real but highly engaged followers than more fake and non-engaging followers.

Social Blade

I’m including Social Blade in my list of social media tools because it not only allows you to see your performance on certain sites, but also the performance of others. You can look up anyone’s handle and see a rating of their growth as well as projections for where their account will be in the future based on their current trends. It’s very useful for those working for brands social pages as they are able to see the way each influencer has grown his or her following and whether that audience is predicted to stay interested.